Has the Transformation of Resource-Based Cities Effectively Promoted the Development of the Tourism Industry? Empirical Evidence from China

When the Sustainable Development Plan for National Resource-Based Cities (SDPNRBC) incorporated tourism into its 2013 policy framework, cities of all sizes pursued tourism-led transitions. More than a decade on, this study asks whether these efforts have translated into genuine improvements in tourism efficiency. Using panel data from 258 Chinese prefecture-level cities spanning 2003 to 2023, we treat the SDPNRBC as a quasi-natural experiment and apply a difference-in-differences framework. Cities covered by the plan saw significant expansion in tourism scale, but tourism total factor productivity declined over the same period, indicating that growth was driven by factor accumulation rather than by genuine efficiency gains. Two channels appear to explain this divergence. The policy triggered a green paradox in which extractive firms accelerated output before tighter regulations took effect, undermining the environmental quality on which tourism depends. In parallel, policy-induced structural reallocation expanded labour-intensive service activity at a pace that outstripped complementary capital and skill formation, a pattern analogous to Baumol’s cost disease. A life-cycle heterogeneity analysis sharpens these findings: efficiency losses concentrate in Growing cities, attenuate in Mature cities, and disappear in Declining and Regenerating cities. Successor-industry policies should therefore be calibrated to where each city stands in its resource life cycle.